The return of the NFL regular season caused a historic increase in broadcast television viewership in September, as shown by data recently published by the research and consulting company specialized in user experience, Nielsen. With NFL games dominating the top 15 broadcasts and the top five most-watched cable broadcasts of the month.
Key data
Nielsen said television viewership increased 20% between September and October, achieving the largest monthly increase of any type of television usage since the data company began tracking it in 2021.
Broadcast television accounted for 22.3% of all television usage in September, putting it ahead of cable viewership for the first time in history.
The record jump can be attributed solely to the NFL and college football, Nielsen said, where sports viewership tripled to account for 33% of all broadcast views in September, up from 11% in August.
Fifteen NFL games broadcast on CBS, FOX and NBC were the most-watched broadcast programs of the month and all surpassed the most-watched broadcast in August, when 16.6 million viewers watched the Ohio State vs. Texas college football game.
September’s top five cable broadcasts included four Monday Night Football games on ESPN and the first international NFL game of the season on NFL Network.
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The return of football also brought Amazon Prime its most-watched Thursday Night Football game in history; the matchup between the Washington Commanders and Green Bay Packers generated more than 3 billion minutes watched on 9/11.
Added to these data is the premiere of the second half of season 2 of “Wednesday” on Netflix, which was the most viewed series of the month on all streaming platforms. The series racked up more than 7 billion minutes of viewing during the month, nearly doubling the viewership of its record-breaking second-place “KPop Demon Hunters.”
Surprising fact
The start of the school year in the US has caused a drop in streaming viewership among school-aged children aged 6 to 17. Time spent watching television decreased by 9% between July and August, and streaming use among schoolchildren decreased by 8% between those two months.
From August to September, a sharp drop in YouTube viewership among children and teens led to a 2% drop in overall streaming on the platform. However, YouTube remained the most viewed streaming platform, representing 12.6% of the entire television audience in September.
This article was originally published by Forbes US
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